Strychnine Poisoning

Sun (Auckland), Volume IV, Issue 984, 29 May 1930, Page 10

Strychnine Poisoning

TERRIFYING EXPERIENCE Doctor Who Took Overdose CASES of poisoning by strychnine have fascinated criminologists and the legal and medical professions for many years. In many cases, particularly of accidental poisoning, personal experiences of the victims have been recorded in medical and legal journals. One of the most interesting’ appears in Taylor's “Principles and Practice of Medical Jurisprudence.” It was considered by that journal to he so important as to deserve nearly verbatim report. The victim was Dr. "W. T. Harris, a hospital doctor, and the full account of his accidental poisoning was taken from the South African Medical Journal of April, 1895.

The doctor’s narrative is as follows: “In January, 1893, it happened that I had for a few weeks been in the habit of taking an occasional dose of one of our stock dispensary mixtures —a tonic containing, among other things, a fair dose of strychnine. The weather was very sultry, the work onerous, as it is in the first few weeks cf the year, and I was hourly expecting a cablegram from home to announce a bereavement, which can only occur once in a lifetime. It was, therefore, not because of any real illness, but only from being anxious and below par that I went to the dispensary before the dispenser had arrived to take a dose of the tonic I have alluded to. "It is kept in concentrated form, the whole bottle containing five drams of the liquid strychnine P. 8., and each ounce of the diluted mixture five minims. Somewhat carelessly 1 poured out sufficient to make an ounce and a-half, and, filling up the measureglass with water, drank it off. INTENSELY BITTER “I at once noticed a much more intensely bitter taste than was usual: for although this characteristic of the drug may be detected in very dilute solutions, it seemed increased tenfold, as it was almost, as I shall presently show. I immediately asked the porter if he knew when the mixture had been made up. and he replied that it had been done the previous day, but as yet none had been dispensed from the bottle. “I did not know what to do, and mv first impulse was to take an emetic but, as the swallowing of saliva les sened the bitter taste every minute that I had hesitated, I persuaded myself that the difference might only be fancy. “Fiften minutes elapsed and I began to feel restless. An indescribable nervous sensation came over me as if there were rope pulleys running down to my extremities, which were gradually being drawn tight. I had to make an effort to prevent my mouth closing too soon as I 'spoke, and to dig my pen into the paper and write thick as if to form, a fulcrum over which to lever my hand along the pages, while a contra-force in my arm strove to dash the pen to the floor. COULD NOT SIT STILL "Fortunately there were but few patients to see that morning. At a little before 11 o’clock Dr. Considine, who was visiting surgeon for the day, came in. I at once told him that I felt very strange and feared I had taken an overdose of this strychnine mixture. He laughed, and said I was nervous. He then commenced talking on some topic in which we were both interested, when I broke in abruptly, saying, ‘I feel I cannot sit still and talk; let us go round the wards.’ “We started through the principal male ward. . . . But the simple round on that particular day seemed then in fact, as it still appears in memory, a dreadful nightmare. My limbs were throwing off the control of will and moved erratically; when I wished to go on my legs stopped and -when by a violent effort I forced them to

proceed I could not pull up to a stand- j still without walking against a bed to steady myself. What I said or did I cannot remember, but I managed to get along somehow, though feeling as j if head, hands and legs did not belong to me but to three separate individ- j uals, like a mechanical doll that has j all its limbs jerked with each pull of | the string. At length we returned to the top of the ward when, feeling j a paroxysm down my back, I said to Dr. Considine, ‘I am really very ill. ! I feel sure I am suffering from strychnine poisoning.’ “I had taken six-tenths of a grain. 1 said ‘Shall I have an emetic?’ and j Dr. Considine said ‘No. it is too late; take 60 grains of chloral. Now go and smoke hard, if you can managp it.’ ” FLINCHING FROM CONTACT The doctor continues that he went to another room after asking his friend not to leave him too long. Dr. , Considine, however, apparently j feared the worst as he went back tc i obtain chloroform, morphia and a ] hypodermic syringe should they be wanted. “I got down the passage, laid on a couch and tried to smoke, but there was no rest possible,” continues Dr. Harris’s narrative. “It was like lying on the felt floor of a Turkish bath. As one flinches there from the heat of contact with surrounding objects so here every touch sent a tetanic convulsion through me. I could not rest. Would the chloral stop or only stay the action of the poison?” The doctor then tells how he tried to get a book to study the symptoms and period of danger. He found that it was in his house some 60 or 70 yards away and he feared that he might be observed. “I started and how I steered myself across is a problem still. I ran in jerks and jumps, like a drunken man makes a dash from one lamp-post t > another. I regained the room in the hospital and, steadying myself between the couch and table, turned to the accounts of strychnine poisoning feeling ‘a trembling of the whole frame’ and ‘impending as I hurriedly glanced at those words so well describing my own symptoms. . . . There was no comfort so far, but at last my eye fixed on this ‘ln fata 1 cases death generally takes place within two hours.’ To that I pinned my faith, for it was nearly 12 o’clock and every moment was a step u* safety. “I was now able to lie down, for the chloral was certainly taking effect, not as a hypnotic, for I was never more wide awake, but I could feel it coursing through my body with a gentle glow and the spasms were abating.” In concluding h& narrative the doctor states that when the poison was eliminated he felt little beyond the weariness after the shock. He attributes his recovery to the large dose cf chloral, and his general good constitution, to the fact that he had been in the habit of taking small doses of strychnine for a week previously in the tonic and that the antidote "was administered quickly.